The Near-Death, Rebirth, and Future of Oddworld

"We were asked in April [2010] to do Stranger's Wrath on PC," says Stewart Gilray, who pulls triple duty as Oddworld Inhabitants' Development Director and Just Add Water's CEO and Creative Director. "We thought four months, maybe five at push." They were wrong.

Porting a five-year-old Xbox game to PC wasn't as easy as Gilray expected. Development took months longer than planned. What began as an attempt to bring an excellent but failed action/adventure/first-person/weirdo western game to a new audience did Stranger's Wrath more harm than good.

Just Add Water found out the hard way that PC gamers are a demanding lot. When wonky controls and problematic visuals don't have corrective settings, they get upset. The violent backlash was the exact opposite reaction he expected, naturally. "Rightfully so, we had our arses ripped a new one," Gilray says. It got under his skin. He didn't sleep for two weeks.

"I was terrified I'd killed Oddworld."

This is what the ire of PC fans looks like in action.

What happened, then? Turns out Just Add Water was the third company to take a stab at (and struggle to) bring back Stranger. Ripping an Xbox game over to PC was a technical nightmare. Gilray's team made it work. The flexibility of PCs caused some headaches, though; everyone has different hardware. Stranger didn't -- and still doesn't -- play properly with certain ATI cards. It released around Christmas, and, bundled with its three Oddworld predecessors in The Oddboxx, made a great Steam package. Stranger may have been a bit of a wreck on the tech side, but the bundle sold well enough. It proved there was interest. Good thing, too. Just Add Water was knee-deep in a bigger, more ambitious port.

It was a month into working on Stranger PC when Just Add Water decided to bring Oddworld back to the PlayStation platform. Gilray pitched the project to Oddworld Inhabitants, which was happy to see it if Sony said yes. Sony was ecstatic and gave Gilray the go-ahead a week later.

A straight port wasn't going to be enough this time around, though. Stranger's Wrath deserved better than its woeful first re-release, so it would receive the full high-definition treatment -- prettier character models, environments, and textures, improved audio, 720p resolution, 60 frames per second, and some swell new features. This would take time, and once again it would take more time than expected. So much so, in fact, it would derail the production schedule Just Add Water laid out for the future of Oddworld.

Stranger's Wrath HD was meant to release on PSN in April 2011, but was delayed to August, and then again to December. Just Add Water became so absorbed that its Munch's Odyssey remake got bumped from fall 2011 to the New Year to spring 2012. Gilray intended to be well into the Abe's Odyssey HD remake by now.

Perfecting the PS3 Stranger redux became an obsession, so much so that Gilray and his team started changing old flaws. For instance, the latter half of the game, which is more action-oriented than the rest, received a massive balance overhaul to soften up some of its more brutal enemies (in addition to two new difficulty options).

On the tech side, Gilray says "we started with the Xbox project source assets and source code. We had everything as it was, comments, documentation, tools, everything." To make old Stranger's Wrath work with new hardware, Just Add Water had to use Maya 4.5, the 2004 version of a widely used 3D animation program. "We did some of the HD modeling in Maya 2011," he explains, "then we'd export it into 4.5, re-hook it up to the original skeletons and rigs, then do a final export." This meant the team was still limited. For instance, artists had to adhere to Stranger's original 64 bones -- but they could do whatever they pleased with his flesh and fur.

It's not exactly an elegant way of making the ol' beast look pretty, but it worked. Stranger's Wrath is done, gorgeous, available on PS3, and coming soon to Vita.

So where's the Xbox 360 version?

Stranger's cinematics look as good as the HD remake's in-game visuals.

"Unfortunately Microsoft have been inclined not to let us on the platform," Gilray says. The sting in his voice is clear: This is a sore spot.

Remember when Sony gave Just Add Water approval in just a few days? Even with Lorne Lanning, the creator of Oddworld, pulling some strings with Microsoft contacts, the studio didn't hear back about the Xbox 360 version for more than nine weeks. The response to its application was a rejection.

The game at the time was just above the 2GB Xbox Live Arcade size limit. A few months later Lanning and Gilray thought about taking the Games on Demand route; size wouldn't matter. Stranger HD, now some 3GB large, meets the usual requirements:

You have to include Achievements. "No problem," says Gilray.

You need to have HD textures and models. "Yep, no problem," says Gilray.

You have to have sold a million units at retail. "Oh," says Gilray, "that's a problem."

See, Stranger's Wrath wasn't successful at all. The publisher then was EA, whose focus wasn't on this peculiar, new-ish IP hitting the original Xbox. It had eyes on the Xbox 360, which was a mere few months from hitting retail shelves.

Lorne Lanning was so upset by the failure and crummy marketing that he shut down his studio and left the games industry just one month after Stranger's Wrath released. It certainly did not sell a million, so the Games on Demand route was out.

Getting Stranger's Wrath HD on the Xbox was "like trying to get blood out of a stone" for Just Add Water. Short of Microsoft almost doubling its current XBLA size limitations, don't expect to see Stranger's Wrath on 360 anytime soon. For now, the ground-up remake is exclusive to the PlayStation.

Munch's game, starring Abe here, running on Vita.

"One thing I've talked to Lorne about is we want to finish off the whole Oddworld Quintology," Gilray explains. After the Xbox talk, I can practically hear him glowing through the phone. "We've only seen two games of the five, Abe and Munch, and we want to do Squeek's Odyssey next...that's what it's all about." His aim also includes the revival of Hand of Odd, the strategy game initially put on ice after Munch's release.

Oddworld and Just Add Water aren't out to exploit our adoration for the old. It's about perpetuating "the love of the brand" and bringing it back from the dead. Gilray is adamant this is how HD remakes and revitalizations should be handled. If you want to see new entries in the universe you'd best be ready to show some love for the past. Fill up your PlayStation wallet, and throw some scratch at Stranger, Munch, and Abe.

You're helping breathe life back into the future of Oddworld.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He bought an Xbox for Stranger's Wrath in 2005. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.